Jews, Catholics bid farewell to French cardinal

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, second left and Prime Minister Francois Fillon, center, meet Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, right, as Monsignor Patrick Jacquin, left, the rector of Notre-Dame cathedral looks on, after attending the funeral of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, on Friday in Paris.

PHOTO: AFP

Jews and Catholics joined in homage, intoning a sacred Jewish prayer beneath the sculpted saints of Notre Dame Cathedral at the funeral of the Jewish-born Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger.

Lustiger, whose mother was killed at the Auschwitz death camp and who later worked to reconcile Catholics and Jews, asked that his funeral include both faiths. One of modern France's most influential church figures, Lustiger died last Sunday at the age of 80 in a Paris hospice.

Before his death, Lustiger asked that a commemorative plaque be placed inside Notre Dame reading: "I was born Jewish. I received my paternal grandfather's name, Aron, I became Christian by faith and baptism, and I remained Jewish like the Apostles did."

Hundreds of people, including prominent Jewish leaders of France, Holocaust survivors and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, gathered to see Lustiger's simple wooden coffin carried through crowds and placed on the stone square in front of the 12th century Notre Dame on Friday.

Lustiger's great-grand-nephew Jonas read a psalm in Hebrew and French, and placed a bowl of earth gathered from Jewish and Christian sites in the Holy Land on the coffin.

"I would have liked to be able to call you today, to find out what you are thinking and to give me advice," Jonas said. "Today, when I close my eyes and think of you, I would like to simply say one thing: Thank you."

An 83-year-old Nazi death camp survivor and the cousin of the cardinal, Arno Lustiger, led the reading of the Mourner's Kaddish, among a series of prayers central to Jewish worship. The prayer is mostly in Aramaic.

The ceremony then moved inside the cathedral, where Lustiger's successor as archbishop, Andre Vingt-Trois, led a funeral Mass. Despite the drizzly chill, hundreds gathered to watch the ceremony on a huge screen outside.

After the three-hour service, pallbearers carried the casket down the stone steps of Notre Dame into the crypt where other archbishops are buried.

One mourner carried a banner reading "Sons and Daughters of the Deported Jews of France." About 75,000 Jews were deported from France to Nazi concentration camps during World War II; fewer than 3,000 survived. It was not until 1995 that then-President Jacques Chirac acknowledged the French government's role in the Holocaust, a move Lustiger cheered.

Lustiger's faith was complex -- he never rejected his Jewish identity.

Though many applauded his efforts at interfaith understanding, "he always claimed he was still a Jew, which caused a certain amount of anxiety and concern within parts of the Jewish community," said Reverend John Pawlikowski, president of the International Council of Christians and Jews.

Rabbi Joel Roth, an expert on Jewish law at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, stressed that it is "not possible to be both Jewish and Catholic" and said it was highly unusual for the Kaddish to be read for a convert from Judaism.

Outside Notre Dame, mourners both Catholic and Jewish said they were not surprised by Lustiger's unusual ceremony.

"Religion is such a personal thing -- what matters is that you use it to do good, not bad," said 60-year-old Serge Dahan, a Jew. Francoise Samborsky, a 56-year-old Catholic, added: "[Lustiger] was an original, and he was true to himself to the end."

Lustiger was an important symbol in France, a country that is historically Catholic but where church is firmly separated from state and many lead secular lifestyles.